Astonishing corruption at Murdoch’s Wall St Journal

Crikey. If this is how Murdoch’s flagship Wall St Journal operates, what’s going on in the background at Fox News?

This tale of corruption, money-channelling and ‘news’ articles used as bribes to keep the conspiracy alive is devastating. It’s from Nick Davies who exposed News International’s phone hacking and police & political corruption …

Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP via The Guadian

The Guardian found evidence that the Journal had been channelling money through European companies in order to secretly buy thousands of copies of its own paper at a knock-down rate, misleading readers and advertisers about the Journal’s true circulation.
The bizarre scheme included a formal, written contract in which the Journal persuaded one company to co-operate by agreeing to publish articles that promoted its activities, a move which led some staff to accuse the paper’s management of violating journalistic ethics and jeopardising its treasured reputation for editorial quality. …

Senior executives in New York, including Murdoch’s right-hand man, Les Hinton, were alerted to the problems last year by an internal whistleblower and apparently chose to take no action. The whistleblower was then made redundant.